Why spinal chiropractic adjustments?

My goal is to help those here obtain a general understanding of Chiropractic.
Chiropractic is a discipline that works with the body to allow it to have an optimal environment to fight and prevent disease. A major component of Chiropractic is the adjustment to the spine. Today’s entry is going to focus mostly on why chiropractors look to the spine to bring about health and wellness
To start off I would like to mention a little about the history of Chiropractic. Spinal treatment to allow the body to function properly and heal or cure disease is not a new concept at all. Chinese records as old as 2700BC depict chiropractic type therapy for a treatment of disease. Still today they use back walking as a method of healthcare. They are not the only people to have this in the records, ancient Egyptians, native Americans, Mayan, Aztec, Toltec, Incas, and Greek all have some form of documentation indicating the use of chiropractic type adjustments to cure, treat and prevent disease. Hippocrates, also know as “The Father or Medicine” said “Get knowledge of the spine, for it is the requisite for many diseases.” Rome’s Claudius Galen known in Rome as “the prince of physicians” used spinal treatment to treat his patients. DD Palmer is said to be the discoverer of chiropractic. This title suggests that chiropractic existed before him. DD Palmer merely restored the practice to the mainstream this took place in 1895. Since then it has continued and still continues to grow worldwide as major form of healthcare.
Why though do chiropractors look to the spine, like Hippocrates recommended so long ago? The spine is made up of 27 moving bones, included the base of the skull called the occiput and the base of the spine called the sacrum and coccyx. All of these bones are meant to move in many ways. Just think of how we can bend and twist and move our body in so many directions. We will return to this movement of the spine in a minute. Next thing that is needed to be understood is that one of the major proposes of the spine is to protect the spinal cord. We will discuss the important of this a little later.
Back to the idea that the spine has so many moving parts. Many times in our life, in fact very often in our lives we will get a decreased or restriction of this movement. We are not talking about flexibility, simply movement of bones in their appropriate plans of motion. These movement deficiencies are known to chiropractors as subluxations. Subluxations or movement deficiencies have grand effects to the body and body systems which we will go into detail about in a moment.
First let’s touch on the causes of subluxation, movement deficiency. There a three causes of subluxation. In chiropractic we call it the triad of health. They are trauma, toxins and autosuggestion.
Trauma can be macro, big, or micro, small. Macro trauma are things like; birth, falls, sports injuries, and accidents. Micro traumas are; poor posture, sedentary (lack of exercise) lifestyle, and overuse injuries.
The next cause of subluxations is toxins. Toxins come in many forms. Environmental toxins are those most commonly talked about on the news, pollutions, and mostly popular to talk about currently on the news are plastic bottles. Toxins that are not mentioned that often are food additives and preservatives. Along with this is the lack or deficiency of the minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients that we need. This will be discussed more in-depth in a subsequent entry.
Lastly autosuggestion, or our mental processes or thoughts is the last cause of subluxation. Most people understand this to be stress. We will discuss stress, including mental stress in detail. For now it is sufficient to say that mental stress is a cause of subluxation. As was mentioned earlier, subluxations have many effects or the body. The rest of this entry will focus on these effects.
The most common reason for patients to go to the Chiropractors office is because of pain. As we continue you will hopefully see that this is unfortunate with all that chiropractic can do, but pain is an effect of subluxation. Truth be told the majority of our pain is perceived subconsciously. What this means is that our brain is aware of pain that we are not. However as the subluxation remains our threshold to pain is reaches which makes ourselves more sensitive to pain. Meaning that we will feel more pain with less of a stimulus. Wait right there, how is something pain if we don’t feel it?

Pain is a perception of neural stimulus called nociception. Nociception is transmitted to the brain but you are not always aware of the transmission. Only until is reaches and exceeded threshold, will you know that there is nociception, which you perceive as pain. So to recap, pain is the awareness of nociception after it exceeds the maximum level that the brain can tolerate without us knowing. This increase in nociception is one of the effects of subluxation.
With chiropractic care movement is restored. As movement is stored and fixations and restrictions are eliminated the nociception, pain signals, to the brain are decreased and the pain that we are aware of goes away. Also with continually care, resulting in proper motion the nociception with farther decease and therefore it will take much more stimulus for you to feel pain where the pain previously existed.
The next effect of the subluxation goes hand in hand with the increase of nociception, pain signals. This is a more serious consequence than pain. This is something that none of us are able to since, unlike pain. Remember how not all nociception is perceived by us consciously. Well like me introduce another term to you, proprioception. Proprioception, like nociception is a signal to the brain. The message that proprioception gives to the brain is the position of our bones. It is a message from the body to the brain telling it where the body is. If your arm is above your head, it is proprioception that tells you brain that your arm is there.
Why is this important? You might ask. First is that another role of proprioception is to inhibit pain, or nociception. When proprioception is decrease then nociception is increased. Second is that with decrease proprioception, your balance, coordination and proper movements are altered. Third and perhaps the most important is that the combination of decrease proprioception, joint positioning, and an increase in nociception, pain signals, leads to and/or contributes to the stress response.
The stress response is misunderstood by most healthcare providers, including medical doctors, chiropractors and physical therapists. As when mentioned earlier when someone speaks about stress they immediately associate is with a mental feeling of being overwhelmed.
They think of the mother of four, who has to have dinner ready and homework done and the house clean and the bills played and on and on. While this is a form of stress, stress is much more than this. Stress is a physiological change in our body, known more commonly as the stress response. Webster’s medical dictionary states that stress is “A physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension and may be a factor in disease causation.”
Interestingly these are the same three components of the chiropractic triad of health. The stress response was studied most thoroughly by a scientist named Hans Selye. He found that no matter what the stressor was, the response was the same. The response that happens every time is; 1^st alarm, 2^nd attempt to adapt, 3^rd fatigue 4^th death. Every stressor, every time the same response.
The key to understanding how this affects us is by understanding what goes on in the body during this response. That is what physiology is, it is the stuff that goes on inside the body.The changes that occur are

Increase cortisol
Increase catecholamines
Increase heart rate
Increase vasoconstriction
Increase blood pressure
Increase glucose levels
Increase lipid levels
Increase blood LDL cholesterol levels
Increase noradrenalin levels
Increase clotting factors
Increase protein degradation of muscle and connective tissue
Increase sensitively of sensory
Increase insulin resistance
Increase recognition of stress, fear, anxiety and depression
Decrease blood HDL cholesterol levels
Decrease short term memory, ability to concentrate, and learn new material
Decrease serotonin levels
Decrease immunity
Decrease in anabolic hormones
Decrease bone density and changes in muscle fibers

I understand that many things on this list are things that some people have never heard. The key though is to understand that these changes are necessary in certain times. An example would be that when we are on the freeway and a car in front of us does something that we have to react to in order to avoid a wreck our body goes into the stress physiology but as soon as that it over, our body is meant to return to a normal state, a non-stressful state.

However when these changes are with us chronically, or over long periods of time, as Hans Selye proved, our body begins to fatigue and eventually dies. Demonstrations of this fatigue are heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, fertility inabilities, obesity, hypothyroid, chronic fatigue. Honestly THE LIST GOES ON AND ON AND ON.
Please do not misunderstand, chiropractic adjustments are not a treatment for these diseases directly in all cases, we’ll discuss one way that they can be, but in this case the subluxation leads to stress physiology and stress physiology leads to diseases. Therefore, by chiropractic adjustments the stress response is decreased and the stress physiology is decrease and therefore the internal environment of the body is in a healthy state and less likely to develop disease. Please note that all of the most common diseases in our society are preventable!!!
So in review, movement deficiency, or the subluxation, will lead to an increase in pain signals called nociception. Also it will lead to a decrease in joint positioning signals called proprioception. These two things combine will lead to an increase in the pain we feel, a decrease in balance and coordination, and most importantly will lead to and contribute to the stress response. These affects that subluxation has on the body and huge and those alone should be reason to be on chiropractic care, there is still one more effect that we would like to talk about tonight.
The final component that we would like to discuss tonight is a reaction known as the somatoviseral response. Many are aware that certain diseases can cause pain in unrelated areas. For example prostrate cancer can cause low back pain. Gentlemen please don’t worry that you have cancer now if you back is hurting. The point is that we can have a disease in one part of the body and another part is affected, that is seemingly unrelated.
The somatoviseral response is the same thing. When we have subluxation, another area of the body can be greatly affected. Do you recall how earlier we mentioned that one of the major purposes of the spine is to protect the spinal cord? To make it very simple the brain controls all the parts of the body. This is done by nerves. Neurons send signal to, and receive signals from the brain. The spinal cord is what connects the neurons to the brain.
Think about it this way. Your brain is a major shopping center; your spinal cord is a highway, with on and off ramps. At each entrance and exit are the nerves that come and go to their homes. So what we are saying is that there can be a subluxation in the lumber area, low back, and that that subluxation can cause changes in the intestine and in our bowels, causing problems like acid reflux and other ailments in areas that are innervated by the nerves that exit and enter that highway, spinal cord, at that level.
The most accepted theory on why this occurs is because the subluxation leads to inflammation. This inflammation cause impedance to nerve conduction which causes decreased function to those parts of the body that are controlled by the nerves that use those off and on ramps near the inflamed areas. Again to make sure we understand this, subluxation can lead to changes in the areas of the body that are controlled by the nerves that leave that spinal cord at the area of subluxation.
All these causes and effects can happen at any joint, the wrist, elbow, shoulder, the ankle, the knee, and the hip. To conclude I would like to just take a moment and return to the causes of subluxations. Toxins, traumas, and thoughts are the causes.
These three things will be the topics of our subsequent entries.